Mobile Application: Fueling Pharmaceuticals Industry Growth

Tectonic shift in technology has made pharmaceuticals industry to indulge themselves in mHealth. As a result, industry has transformed to mobile powered market and data-driven sales. 86% clinicians believe that mobile apps will become important to physicians for patient health management over the next five years.

Pharmaceuticals manufacturers have at least one major opportunity in common with most other businesses – supporting huge sales force with mobile technology in order to proffer far-away efficiency to bridge with its customers and secure company data access wherever it is needed. But, many believe that mobile apps only affect the way end users work, but this is far from the truth.

Reasons why Pharmaceutical Companies are keen towards mHealth:
As we know, pharmaceutical industry is currently confronting obstacles in both marketing and sales zone. Mobility reduces the risk of bottlenecks occurring in the process like current trends and updates, route planning, calls management, time management, data management, hyper competition, sales customer relationship, stock management and monitoring etc. In pharma especially, mobility can revolutionize even the work flow from drug discovery to post-market surveillance, like

2. Marketing & Sales:
Utility of mobile apps in pharma is a natural fit for on-the-go sales and marketing professionals simultaneously which enable them to use similar processes, formats for lead generation and prospect profiles. Meanwhile, leads that are generated through marketing campaigns and other efforts are collected and fed into a mobile app, enabling field sales to quickly obtain insights about customer regarding their current position in the sales zone. For the workflow of sales and marketing mobility provide secure infrastructure to distribute and protect sensitive customer data. There are several more mobility touch points revolutionizing marketing & sales,
• Mobile Medical Education
• GPS based Route Planning
• Call Reporting
• Sample Inventory
• Travel & Expense Management
• Campaign Management

3. Distribution
Mobility has large influence on Supply Chain Management, which involves:
• Stock Management
• Drug Authentication
Stock or Inventory management is optimized by mobile devices – they serve as locator while shipping, check accuracy of order being packed and shipping labels, maintain productivity levels and ensure very short delivery lead times. Pharmaceutical industries are keen towards counterfeit medicines, mobility facilitate in combating counterfeit medicines by providing security services for drug authentication.

4. Post-Sales
In Post-Sales, mobility regulates market surveillance – including, Patient Portal Engagement, calculating app usage on user’s mobile device, outcomes and patient’s data is routed to physician or hospital, in order to monitor medical and market conditions. Also assist to develop adherence, by reporting patient’s vital signs, communicating medication use and empowering patient to take charge of their wellness and, in the process, generate real-world evidence to help both pharmaceuticals and the payer community. Few mobile post-sales activities include:
• Registration and Profile Management
• Pharmacist Program
• Survey
• Collaborate with HCPs
• Dashboard

It is clear, that pharmaceuticals industry have numerous mobile-platform benefits, it spans the entire value-chain and is emerging as a key touch point for pharmaceuticals and life sciences industry in which mobile apps helps to engage employees, physicians, patients etc. to acquire privacy and security of data. Mobility provides essential insights for pharmaceuticals workflow and companies could utilize digital engagement as positive change and breakdown stakeholder’s barriers.